Case Study:“Our Best Sales Hires”

Client: Thomson Reuters

Great salespeople make a big difference. Sales Talent Agency helped Thomson Reuters find some of their very best.

The Challenge

Between 2014-2016, Thomson Reuters was growing significantly and needed to make a number of critical hires for their sales team. Due to the complex nature of their solution suite, Thomson Reuters required smart, creative and seasoned sales professionals with very specific career experience. Sales Talent Agency was brought on-board to support the internal recruitment team in finding, engaging and hiring top sales talent for these roles.

The Mission

Sales Talent Agency’s role was to find, engage and present the highest quality sales candidates for every open sales role moving forward, ensuring that Thomson Reuters Sales Leaders had the very best candidates to choose from for every open role. Roles varied in experience requirements, and the profiles often were complex and particular to a specific product, industry focus, language requirement, and territory. At any given time there were 3-10 critical sales vacancies across Canada that required a very specific skillset.

"At any given time there were 3-10 critical sales vacancies across Canada that required a very specific skillset"

The Company

Thomson Reuters is recognized as the world’s leading source of intelligent information for professionals in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, and media markets. With more than 45,000 employees in 100+ countries, Thomson Reuters generated $11.2B in revenue in 2016.

The Arrangement

Sales Talent Agency was prepared to work hard in finding Thomson Reuters the exact candidates they were searching for. By delivering on the niche candidate profiles sought after, our aim was twofold; to gain credibility and build a longterm partnership proving ourselves as the Thomson Reuters recruitment partner of choice.

For each of the 3-10 critical sales roles that were open at any given time, candidates were presented in 6-10 business days. To provide further quality assurance, Sales Talent Agency guaranteed every candidate’s success for the first 3 months of employment.

The Process

STA’s recruitment team interviewed each sales leader to:

Analyze the role requirements

Describe traits of top performers

Identify issues to avoid

Highlight key selling features of the role

Fully understand what each position does and the expectations of success

Detailed profiles were created based on STA’s DNA/PRO™ candidate analysis methodology and the recruitment team went to work.

This search was not about casting a wide net, rather specifically engaging highly qualified candidates that embodied the client's distinct profile for each role. Because the potential candidate pool for each role was relatively small, each qualified person contacted was treated as a critical engagement, with our team meticulously positioning Thomson Reuters as an elite employer with all of the career benefits that entails.

Once qualified candidates were interested in moving forward, STA’s recruitment team facilitated multiple meetings, interviews and conversations to ensure both the candidate and the Thomson Reuters leadership team had all the information needed to make an educated decision in a timely manner.

The Result

Thomson Reuters successfully made 11 hires through Sales Talent Agency between 2014-2016, and have continued to use our services ever since. STA’s candidates were not just a great fit at the time but are continuously thriving 3+ years later. Since placed, 9 are currently with the company and 2 have been promoted into leadership roles. All 9 are categorized as top performers by Thomson Reuters.

Since this project Sales Talent Agency and Thomson Reuters continue to partner on recruitment projects